I feel greatly honoured and privileged being invited to speak on this auspicious occasion, of the thirty-third session of the International Fund for Agricultural Development Governing Council.

His Excellency Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, was to participate on this occasion personally but due to other pressing commitments he was unable to do so in the last minute. However, due to the importance of this meeting he chose me to come and speak on his behalf.

President Kikwete sends his greetings and commends the IFAD Secretariat for organizing the thirty-third session. He wishes this meeting a great success.

At the outset, may I take this opportunity to congratulate Dr Kanayo Nwanze for being elected by acclamation as the fifth President of IFAD by all member countries and I wish him success as he embarks on his discharging his responsibilities in the four-year term.

This session is taking place at the time when the world is recovering from the aftershocks of recent global turmoil rooted from serious food and financial crises, coupled with high fuel prices. It has recently been revealed that the number of under-nourished people in the world due to crises is now around one billion. The increased number of the hungry indicates the strategies which were designed to contribute to the achievement of the global and national goals of reducing hunger, including the Millennium Development Goal 1, have not yielded the expected results.

Tanzania reaffirms its continued commitment to work with IFAD to overcome the challenges facing agricultural development especially in developing countries. Since its formation in 1977, IFAD has strived hard to meet its objectives of ensuring that poor rural people have better access to and the skills and organization they need to take advantage of: natural resources, especially land and water; improved agricultural technologies and effective production services. Also there is need for a broad range of financial services, transparent and competitive markets for the agricultural inputs and produce. The opportunities for rural off-farm employment and the enterprise development, and the local national policy and programming processes need also to be emphasized.

The agricultural sector will continue to be the mainstay of most of the developing economies, particularly those of Africa, where the majority of the people still depend on agriculture as a source of livelihoods. In most African countries agriculture is the main source, not only of food as in all countries worldwide, but it is also a major source of income. This implies that, if we are to bring about sustainable agricultural development, the economic potentials in the agricultural sector must be fully exploited. Since the majority of the people who undertake farming activities in Africa are smallholder farmers, special attention in terms of support and facilitation need to be accorded to them if they are to contribute to the green revolution that we envisage in many developing countries, particularly Africa.

I know that the underlying IFAD's objective is the belief that the rural poor people must be empowered to lead their own development; to develop and strengthen their own organizations that can advance their own interest and dismantle the obstacles that prevent them from creating better lives. Rural people need to have a say in the decisions and policies that affect their lives and to strengthen their bargaining power in the market place. This belief is noble and existing experience on the ground has shown that IFAD is all out to meeting its mandate as is enshrined in its objectives. Through loans and grant, IFAD has worked with our governments to develop and finance various programmes and projects that have enabled poor people to overcome poverty by themselves.

In Tanzania, for example, IFAD’s support has been directed to many agricultural and rural programmes and projects. It suffices to mention three of these programmes. The first programme is the support through the Agricultural Services Support Programme whose objective is to improve agricultural productivity. This programme has made it possible for the formation of several farmers and livestock keepers groups that receive training through farm-field schools of different production technologies. This approach is beneficial as it has been practical, easily replicable and sustainable.

The second programme is the Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme which is geared to improving the structure, conduct and performance of agricultural marketing systems. The programme has made achievements in achieving marketing systems and in so doing assuring peasants of good prices for their produce. The warehouse receipt systems has benefited small farmers by facilitating storage of their produce during the period of harvest when prices are low and selling their produce at the time when demand for food is high and prices are also high. This is an excellent innovation indeed and beneficiaries have commended it.

The third programme is the Rural Financial Service Programme which aims at enhancing the capacity of the rural poor to mobilize savings and to invest in income-generating activities. This programme has also made a tremendous success by mobilizing rural communities to organize themselves and form savings and credit associations. By June 2009, for example, there were 276 of these, with a total of 110,679 members, 43 per cent of the individual members being women, which were supported by this programme.

There are many other practical, good examples of projects and programmes that are supported by IFAD and that can be enumerated from other countries. I would like, at this point, to commend the IFAD Executive Board and in particular the Governing Council which charts out the IFAD policy for fighting rural poverty and ensuring that agricultural development is given due attention at all levels, including the disadvantaged poor people residing in rural areas. The good field work must be scaled up and engagement in sector-wide agricultural programmes should be given due attention and consideration.

IFAD’s support adds to our own efforts in dealing with the challenges of revolutionalizing agriculture and assuring ourselves of food security. Among others, major challenges that face agriculture in Africa include: inadequate access to agricultural technology, inadequate infrastructure, low productivity due to inadequate use of agricultural inputs, poor marketing systems, inadequate value addition, lack of financial services, weak producer organizations, climate change and poor water management practices.

Inadequate access to agricultural technology has made it difficult for agricultural productivity to improve. Access to modern technology therefore is, hence, very critical in gaining solutions that will help farmers improve productivity. These solutions would include best agricultural practices, as well as access to quality seeds, fertilizer and crop protection.

Inadequate infrastructure poses a great constraint in movement of agricultural inputs and produce. The most critical area which affects rural farmers most is the poor rural infrastructure networks which link the farmers and market places. The networks also facilitate the movement of goods from rural areas to market centres. Markets in Africa can be volatile and inaccessible to most smallholder farmers who also lack business skills and information about where to get the best price. As a result, most small farmers are exploited by unscrupulous traders who offer very low prices. Thanks to the initiatives such as the warehouse receipts systems, which are trying to liberate farmers from the exploitation by the greedy traders.

At the international level the highly subsidized agriculture in developed countries renders uncompetitive agricultural products from the unsupported and the unfunded agriculture in developing countries. Unfortunately, the subsidy issue is one of the major issues that have delayed the conclusion of the negotiations of the Doha Development Round. Thus, subsidies to agriculture are part of the underlying cause to rapidly rising food prices and the destruction of small-scale farming in developing countries, particularly Africa.

Lack of financial services to boost the capital and investment of smallholder farmers is a major constraint in improving agriculture in Africa. In addition to the view that agriculture is a risky sector, lending to small farmers is not considered almost to many commercial banks. Although smallholder farmers are trying to organize themselves to form savings and credit societies, they also face weak organizational skills.

Lack of financial resources at a larger scale at the national level has also made it difficult to develop alternative sources of water for agriculture in the form of irrigation. As a result, over 90 per cent of farmers in Africa depend on rain-fed agriculture which is unpredictable and affects the reliability of yields and quality of crops. While 70 per cent of the world’s water use is for agriculture, Africa uses only 4 per cent of available water reserves for irrigation compared with Asia which utilizes 17 per cent. Only 7 per cent of the arable land is irrigated in Africa compared to 38 per cent in Asia and 12 per cent in Latin America. In Tanzania only 1 per cent of arable land is irrigated.

Climatic changes in recent decades and especially the greater propensity for erratic rainfall and drought in tropics have affected agricultural production. Climate change compromises the productivity of low technology agriculture on which the livelihoods of the majority of Africans, especially women, depend. Climate effects in the form of floods, drought or earthquakes as experienced recently in Haiti, affect crop yield and compromise food security of poor developing countries.

Let me conclude by saying that we have challenges to face in agriculture but at the same time we have solutions. We have the resources, technologies and expertise required. We have institutions to generate the needed technologies; we have institutions like IFAD, FAO, WFP etc. to support the application of these technologies and we have had several summits to elaborate on the issues of agricultural challenges and the support needed. We have had billions of dollars pledged to invest in agriculture. However, they have not been forthcoming. We need to work together in faith with all partners to help turn around agriculture and bring a green revolution to Africa. IFAD has shown the way. We expect them to continue making their presence more felt and we expect other development partners and stakeholders to join us in our efforts to develop our agriculture.

In Africa, we have committed to allocate 10 per cent of annual budgets to agriculture. For those who have pledges to honour we urge them to do so since today we have the political will and well-designed programmes to engage in agriculture and give it the importance that it deserves. If we are to save the lives of the future generations, particularly those depending on agriculture for their livelihoods, the time is now.

Once again, I wish this session fruitful deliberations and outcome.

17 February 2010